Tag Archives: hammer mill

Usual Rubbish

Lights out.

Must be the generator, Mitch. Did you use that nefarious contraption again? Probably pulled too much current, and now look at us. Clueless and in the dark. What’s new, eh?

Yes, my friends. More power issues here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That long extension cord I had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run from the pizza place across the street? Well, someone discovered it, unplugged it, etc. Last time I order a pizza from those cheapskates! And when we found an alternative power source (i.e. the antique store on the other side of the alley… their back door latch is a little unreliable), what happens but Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, decides to crank up the old Orgone Generating Device in the basement where Trevor James Constable left it years ago, and… and… well, I hate when that shit happens.

This always happens when we’re between tours. People get bored, start looking for distractions. For the two Lincolns (posi and anti), it’s Yahtzee – game after game of freaking Yahtzee. No wonder they lost the war! (Home schooling… what can I tell you?) For the mansized tuber, it’s that stupid ant farm he got for Christmas. (He just loves to watch the little guys dig tunnels.) For Matt, it’s running around after wild animals with bags of seed and video cameras. Johnny White? He’s all about flying aeroplanes. Mitch Macaphee’s tastes, however, are a bit more exotic. Time travel, the thirst for limitless power, formulating theorums to destroy galaxies …. idle hands, you know. So he fires up the old Orgone Generating Device, blows a fuse next door, and now I can’t even post a podcast, for chrissake.

Then there’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his latest obsession. He picked up my Harper’s magazine the other day, thumbed through it, and read a statistic about how many robots there are in the world today. Not counting household appliances, it’s apparently in excess of one million – that’s right, more than a million automatons in the world today! Well, this hit Marvin like a truck. “I am not alone” I heard him repeat to himself in standard, monotonous robotian fashion. That’s what he’s been up to. Wheeling around the mill, Harper’s issue in hand, muttering to himself. What’s next? Will he find a nice, wind-up pen pal? Will he volunteer for the Romney campaign?

Well, that’s all I’ve got. My between-the-tours pastime, somewhat less enjoyable, is trying to keep the lights on in this freaking dump. Any suggestions on where I should run this extension cord next?

Hey, check it out – new January episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN. You’ve been warned.

Usual Rubbish

Grappling with hooks.

Hmmm. I like that one you had the other night. How did it go? Strum through that number once again, will you? There’s a good chap.

Ensconced once again within the crumbling walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, I can report that we of Big Green are back to doing what we do best: inventing snacks out of items collected from the goodwill box. If it weren’t for all this music stuff we might be good at it by now. Oh, the burden of servings such a demanding muse! Nothing is good enough, nothing! We work our fingers to the bone – nay, to the marrow – hammering out songs in the clammy basement of this condemned factory, then tossing them skyward… only to see them knocked back in anger. “Send me hooks!” demands the disembodied voice. “We are not amused!”

It appears that somewhere in the metaphysical accounting department some faceless paper-pusher assigned us a pop music muse. Let’s get one thing clear – we do not make pop music. We make crackle music – there’s a difference. It’s a whole ‘nother Rice Krispie. We don’t write choruses like, Keep the ball rollin, keep the ball rollin…! or We could have had it all-uh-hall…! Nah, nah, nah – our choruses go like this:

I’m not Kublai Khan, no no no!
I’m not Kublai Khan, no no no!

… or …

Lincoln! It shouldn’t happen to our quality Lincoln!

No wonder that muse hates our guts (or at least our hooks). Though I think all of us agree – this is the kind of criticism we have received in the past from our various labels. Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm (now Hegephonic); Loathsome Prick; all of them had their concerns with the material. They also had some concerns about our various retainers – Mitch Macaphee, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and our official spokesvegetable the mansized tuber (now tweeting at http://www.twitter.com/mansizedtuber ). Before putting any resources behind a terrestrial tour of any kind, they would insist that we cut them loose, shave off our long yokel beards, and start playing banjo versions of the Monkees’ greatest hits. For my money, I prefer to confine our performances to deep space… for the nonce, at least.

Well, is that the time? Got to get back to work on that album. Oh, yes… there will be another…. all in due time.

Usual Rubbish

What’s new.

Well, it’s finally coming down. The snow that is. And the lamp post. Yes, you heard me right – the lamp post came down … and Jim Bob is responsible.

Okay, truth is… I don’t know for certain that Jim Bob is responsible. It may well have been Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who knocked the lamp post down during the first snow storm of the year. Here it is, the week after Christmas, and people are still driving like it’s July. Spoiled by global warming, I suppose. In any case, I only have myself to blame. It was I who suggested that Marvin serve as our chauffeur until a suitable replacement might be found. What? You didn’t know we had people driving us around? Well, that’s because we haven’t up until now. We’ve just recently adopted the Bowie-esque doctrine of acting successful to become successful. It’s like priming the pump, man.

Why this sudden obsession? Well, as you know, we of Big Green weren’t exactly born with the word “success” tattooed on our butts. (Mine has something else entirely tattooed onto it. I’m giving you twelve guesses what that might be.)  We’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel for lo these past three decades, playing in dives, recording in the basement on superannuated technology, scratching for every inch, inching for every scratch…. you get the picture. (Actually, you get the sound file. We don’t do pictures.) What have we got to show for it? A second-hand robot chauffeur, that’s what. And one that can’t avoid major obstacles.

I know, I know – I shouldn’t complain, what with this being the season of kindness and gratitude. (Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sees it more as the season of mindlessness and attitude, but that’s how he rolls.) We’re still recording, still flailing away at the canon, committing item after item from the seemingly bottomless vat of unrecorded material to virtual tape. You can hear the results of these sessions on our podcast, This Is Big Green, where we post first drafts of songs we will eventually release as our next album(s).

So sure, we live in a drafty mill, no fuel for the fire, no food in the fridge, no miracle grow for the mansized tuber (not that he needs it).  But we’ve got something more valuable than any of that: a gift coupon to Tony’s pizza, good for another three days. To the limo… and damn the lamp posts!